Seems logically best to have at least 2 bottles. For when the bottle depletes of Co2 you will still have Co2 injected into your tank. Especially at times Drake noted that it can take a few days for the Co2 to start.

Yeah, I plan to make another bottle and inject again two-three weeks after signs of slowing down and weak co2 diffusion. And as for co2 to start, it actually only took 24 hours for the recipe to get going and produce co2 for me during my first recent experience. Could be the summer heat which helped speed things. So yeah, the time for diy co2 to get going likely depends on temps, I believe. Thanks for the advice.

Yeah, I plan to make another bottle and inject again two-three weeks after signs of slowing down and weak co2 diffusion.

I would go small. I have 4 or 5 of the 500 ml soda bottles hooked to my 5G. I do dose ferts and excel, yet the regular baby tears are doing great! They have covered my tank nicely and are actually growing like weeds.

Has anyone tried this recipe with honey? I'm thinking of making some mead .

Nice work Darth! They say for cooking, 1 cup honey = 1 cup sugar. Traditional mead is just honey, water, and yeast, but there are lots of variations from there including various spice combinations. Please keep on reporting back with results!

I've begun my initial trial run! We went to a home brew place yesterday and picked up stuff to get started. I've decided to use (5) 750mL wine bottles for my 55 gal tank since that should be about 40% of Drake's 1/2 gallon setup since my tank is about 37% the size, it should scale about the same I would think... I decided since I had (3) empty wine bottles available to begin I started all (3) at once, then I'll start phasing the rest in - this should allow me to have 4 or 5 bottles ready for sampling at my wedding (8/24)... I'm not a big wine drinker, but hoping that maybe doing the home brew might allow me to make some flavorful wines that I like and then I can start drinking it =)

So far I started out (2) bottles using the Welch's 100% grape juice as suggested, and I used about 5-6oz per bottle (Drake's scaled version would have required 4.6oz per 750mL bottle I had figured). Scaled the sugar to about 10 tbsp. per bottle, 1/2-3/4tsp of lemon juice and 1/4 tsp of wine yeast. In the grape juice ones I then topped off with RO/DI water (wasn't sure if I should use RO/DI, or just my RO, but I had RO/DI prepared so I used it...) my third bottle I did all the same except instead of grape juice and water I used about 16oz of Minute maid just 15 cal per serving lemonade. My fiancé said she wasn't sure how that would turn out since it uses aspartame in it, but I'm testing it out to see what happens! It is bubbling, so must be doing something!

Now its another hurry up and wait game =( I have too many of those in these hobbies! I ran the air line in to an airstone in the tank to break up the CO2 bubbles, but it hasn't built up enough pressure to make noticeable bubbles in the tank yet, so we'll see how its doing in a few days...

One question that came up as I was setting up my wine bottles, should I be mixing the sugar in or will it dissolve enough on its own over the 25-30 days that it takes to make the wine? Its just sitting in a clump on the bottom right now, so was wondering if I should have shook it up before adding the yeast? I'm assuming I shouldn't do anything to it now that the yeast is in and working?

another question - I currently have an airstone bubbling with air going through it 24/7, its on the lowest setting that my air pump will go which produces quite a few bubbles of air still, should I turn this off during the day to get more out of the CO2 while the lights are on, or just leave it running as normal? I would think leaving it running would help counteract the possibility of my pH dropping too much (not currently planning on shutting the CO2 off at night, but eventually I might add a shutoff valve and balloon to control it at night...), I wouldn't expect the CO2 bubbles to outperform my air pump, but I guess I'll see what it looks like in a few days =)...

I've lost a lot of fish due to switching my tank over to a planted tank, caused my ammonia and nitrite to spike and cycle the tank again, I still have a few fish in there that hopefully I don't kill while trying to add CO2 for the plants, but it won't be a devastating loss at this point if I do lose more I guess...

Awesome, thanks for playing rininger! I use RO in my wine. Tap would be fine for most people (in fact the local water chemistry affects which wines and beers are best in certain regions), but my tap is from the roof and I don't want to boil it first so I just use RO. If the Minute-Maid is bubbling, it should work! As you surely know, all you really need is sugar, water, and yeast...the rest is just for flavoring! If your airstone isn't bubbling, you might 'leak check' your system by spraying all joints/junctions with soapy water and watch for mad bubbling at the leak! That's what the propane/gas furnace guys do! Then break out the caulk gun... Oh, don't worry about mixing the ingredients; the yeast will do that for you inside of a week. Why do the labor yourself when they will do it for you?

cool, I'm starting to get a little 'head' on the top of each bottle it appears, so all three seem to be going fine. I will have to leak check it because the way I have it set up currently I didn't have all of the piece parts that I needed, so I've pieced something together to make it work...

I have a 3/8" air line that is a tight fit in the top of my universal stoppers, then on two of my bottles they "T" together in to one line, then the third bottle goes from the 3/8" air line to a 1/4" air line (via shoving the 1/4" airline inside the 3/8", which seems to be a tight fit as I could only get it to go in so far and when I pull on them they don't come back out), then the 1/4" line goes through a 1/4" "T" and connects to the other two bottles via the same tight fit 3/8 to 1/4" hose conversion, then from that "T" runs to my air stone in the tank. edit to add: I also have the universal toppers in the top of the airlocks now too, so that could be an additional leak point, but it seemed cleaner than trying to drill a hole and glue the hose in the little plastic cap like what I've seen up above...

I haven't silicone anything, so if it doesn't start bubbling as more pressure builds up then I'll go back and start silicone things together, currently I'm just under the assumption that it isn't producing enough CO2 to make the airstone bubble (I'm probably only producing half a dozen bubbles a minute right now since this is only a couple of hours old, and I haven't sat in front of the tank yet to see if CO2 bubbles are coming out the airstone).

Since I bought my RO/DI filter for my reef tank I've started drinking RO or RO/DI water from it as well. I got a TDS meter with it and tested my well water and was 200+ ppm TDS, running that through a brita pitcher got it down to about 100+ ppm TDS, my RO is something like 1 - 2 ppm TDS, and my RO/DI is 0... I've found I like drinking clean water even though I grew up drinking well water =)

So after the first week I have added a fourth bottle, after adding the 4th bottle and having it running for a day it is producing MUCH faster than the first three were, and it appears the first 3 are already pretty much dead... now I'm wondering if this is due to something I did differently? There are only two things I can think of, I filled the bottle up further this time because I didn't need nearly as much bubble space as I allowed in the first 3 bottles. The other thing is that even though I haven't noticed any leaks, I went ahead and caulked everything on the 4th bottle that I haven't done on the first 3 yet. Also I noticed that every time the 4th bottle bubbles the first 3 have a little shake like there is pressure back feeding to the first 3 bottles.

Obviously I need to caulk everything I haven't done yet, but what else should I do? Do I need check valves to keep the pressure from back flowing? Should I add more yeast to the first 3 to keep them producing? I can't imagine its already done producing after just one week...

I still haven't seen any bubbles in the tank from the CO2 line. I removed the airstone thinking maybe it didn't have enough pressure to push through the airstone and still haven't seen any bubbles...

Don't wait a week at a time, add a new bottle every 4-5 days. Otherwise your CO2 production is going to be up and down and no one will be happy but the algae.

Quote:

...it is producing MUCH faster than the first three were, and it appears the first 3 are already pretty much dead... now I'm wondering if this is due to something I did differently? ... I went ahead and caulked everything on the 4th bottle that I haven't done on the first 3 yet.

Could be producing faster just because of the heat. Get a spray bottle with soapy water for leak checks; keep on caulking.

Quote:

Do I need check valves to keep the pressure from back flowing?

No; once all leaks are stopped there will be no back flow.

Quote:

Should I add more yeast to the first 3 to keep them producing? I can't imagine its already done producing after just one week...

No, it's impossible that your yeast died off AND conditions are still favorable such that adding more yeast will help. If your yeast died off, 1 of 2 things happened: (1) they ran out of food because you did not add enough sugar initially, or (2) the alcohol level got high enough to kill them. To make sure they have enough food, follow the recipe exactly or get your own hydrometer. Too little sugar and they die of starvation before they die of alcohol, too much sugar and there will be too much sugar left over after they die of alcohol (too sweet wine).

Quote:

I still haven't seen any bubbles in the tank from the CO2 line. I removed the airstone thinking maybe it didn't have enough pressure to push through the airstone and still haven't seen any bubbles...

I had to scale it to my size since I'm only doing 750mL bottles vs. your 1/2 gallon bottles, but I'll try adding another tablespoon of sugar next time and see how it works out...

I think it was actually 6 days between the initial and adding my next bottle. I still need to get a better diffuser than just an airstone I think, so I don't know how much CO2 will be released in to the water vs. just bubbling to the top until I get a good diffuser.

And with my leaks its unlikely much if anything is even making it to my tank right now since I haven't seen any bubbles... I don't really want to take everything apart to caulk the lines for the first 3 bottles right now, so I'm just going to let them keep going and will caulk them when I take them off before I start them again.

does it make sense that since I'm using a smaller bottle (750mL) that it would take less time for it to complete? I'm not seeing any movement in the first few bottles I started, but they have only been going for about 13-14 days. I pulled the first bottle and it smelled like alcohol pretty strongly, so I took a sip and it tasted pretty strong... just wondering if I should let it keep sitting or if it makes sense that it would take less time since there is less sugar/yeast/etc to do its thing?

in my experience, volume is irrelevant. the yeast population rises to meet the mass of sugar available. maybe that happens a little faster in a smaller volume if you add the same amount of yeast vs a big volume. are you saying you haven't seen any action in 2 weeks, or you're not seeing action any more now at 2 weeks? they definitely go strongest at the end of week 1 into week 2, but if you are not seeing bubbles in the bottle at 2 weeks, something's wrong. mine are in rotation for almost a month; they definitely taper off, but that's why a new one goes into rotation every 4-5 days, joining 5 older ones. the smell/taste of alcohol is a good sign, but without a hydrometer to test, it's all guesswork.

I'll eventually pick up a hydrometer so I can monitor it closer, but this seems to be done. I sampled it and it tastes like wine (although I'm not a wine drinker) but my fiance drinks wine regularly and she said it tasted like wine to her too... I've removed the first bottle but haven't capped it off yet, I haven't seen any bubbles in the past week, but I'm assuming that is a sign that the yeast has died off from lack of sugar / alcohol level. My second bottle hasn't been producing any bubbles or seeing any floaties in it for the past week either, so I think it is done... I had taken them off and shook them up to stir up whatever sugar was left because there was a ring of sugar at the bottom of the bottle that seemed like it wasn't dissolving, when I did this the 3rd bottle that hadn't been producing any bubbles started producing again (and I started the first 3 bottles all on the same day), then my 4th and 5th are still producing and I've added bottle #6.

I think from what I've been reading it makes sense that it is done already, I scaled all of your ingredients as closely as possible, so there is less sugar and less volume, so the yeast (which I couldn't scale because I think your measurement was "a sprinkle of yeast" which I can't quantitatively measure to be able to scale, so I'm using 1/4 tsp of yeast (which reading again seems to be more than your sprinkle if 1 packet should do 5 gallons because I only got (6) 750mL bottles out of a packet) to be able to measure it consistently) will eat through the sugar faster and the alcohol % would increase faster in the lower volume, so I think I'm ok... I might have to switch over to bigger bottles though because adding a bottle every 4-5 days seems to be too long, in these smaller bottles I would have to add one every 3 days at this rate...

I started my first bottle using apple juice the other day, my fiance also picked up a cranberry juice mix that I'm going to try as well as white grape juice...

We cracked open our first bottle of wine last night. It had been corked for about 6 weeks after it came off (which it came off pretty early because I think I put too much yeast in and the alcohol content killed the yeast before they were able to eat through all of the sugar). The benefit of it not eating through all of the sugar was that the wine was sparkling when I opened it... I'm not a wine drinker by any means, but this tasted pretty good compared to the wine that my wife drinks on a regular basis... she wasn't quite sure about it, but we hadn't chilled it so maybe she'll like it better tonight since we tossed what was left in the bottle in the fridge to chill it. She seems to like a drier wine though, which apparently I must like a sweeter wine =).

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